APRS Direct

About

APRS, Automatic Packet Reporting System is an ham radio-system that uses packet radio to send real time tactical information. APRS has been developed by Bob Bruninga, callsign WB4APR. More information about APRS can be found at www.aprs.org or at wikipedia.

The goal of this website is to present all sent aprs information (that has reached an igate) in a user friendly way. This website is maintained by me Per Qvarforth SM4WJF (I'm a Swedish ham radio operator).

I named the website APRS Direct since each user browser will be connected directly to our own APRS-IS server (with no intermediate database-server). By having a direct connection to an APRS-IS server we can achive a REAL real-time APRS feed.

Track Direct

This website uses the product "Track Direct", developed by me. The product "Track Direct" consists of several modules used by tracking websites.

• The Track Direct Collector
• The Track Direct Websocket Server
• The Track Direct Javascript Client
• The Track Direct Website Framework
• The Track Direct Symbol Generator
• The Track Direct Heatmap Creator

Websites that use "Track Direct"

• APRS Direct
• Glider RADAR

Contact us

Please feel free to contact me by email: per@aprsdirect.com.

If you have feedback regarding the website functionality or if you have found an error I will do my best to fix it.

Technical description

• All APRS data is collected from the APRS-IS network.
• The real time feed is achived by letting the browser connect to our own APRS-IS server through a websocket connection (with no intermediate database-server).
• The heatmap that is shown when you zoom out is generated once every hour.
• The raw feed shown at the bottom of the website includes all packets that has been added to the map. If you move around on the map more packets will be added to the map.
• The initial map position is based on your IP address. This is achived by using the GeoLite2 data created by MaxMind, available from http://www.maxmind.com.
• The geographical data like city locations is received from http://www.geonames.org/.

Credits

• Thanks to Bob Bruninga, WB4APR for developing APRS.
• Thanks to Rossen Georgiev for the APRS library for Python, used for interacting with our APRS-IS server.
• Thanks to Matti Aarnio, OH2MQK and Heikki Hannikainen, OH7LZB for aprsc (an APRS-IS server for Linux)
• Thanks to Jeffrey J. Guy for heatmap (a Python module used to create heatmaps).
• Thanks to all APRS-users that has tested this website!